This Week is Prime for Beachcombing on Oregon Coast: Fossils, Wrecks, Seashells, Other Oddities

Published 02/25/25 at 6:45 p.m.
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Yachats, Oregon) – One heckuva set of storms and now one interesting aftermath. (Photo Susan Burr of debris in Neskowin in 2010)

The sun is out along the Oregon coast and it appears to be lovely conditions up and down the beachy region, after a series of heavy wave events and high winds battered the area all weekend. Buoys out there reported 35-foot breakers offshore and even earlier today there major tidal inundations along beach accesses.

Now, there's a welcome shift to lovelier weather.

The forecast is for calm conditions (at least on the beaches) and mostly sunny to somewhat sunny skies for the next few days.

You know what that means? It's beachcombing time.

Photo Seaside Aquarium - Janthina snail shell

If ever there's a good reason to play a little hooky from work midweek and go scanning the beaches for cool stuff, this is it. All that oceanic action is going to mean something interesting has washed up somewhere along the coastline.

Moolack Beach ghost forest root system

Major waves mean lots of erosion as well, so it's a good time to go check favorite haunts for the emergence of ghost forests, like Hug Point, Arch Cape (near Cannon Beach), Newport's Moolack Beach or the Viking-age stumps down at Sunset Bay near Coos Bay. These are mostly 4,000 years old – older than the Neskowin ghost stumps. See where to find all ghost forests in Oregon.

Sujameco in 2024: Courtesy Oregon's Adventure Coast

Also, check out Bastendorff Beach near Coos Bay to see if the wreck of the Sujameco is showing more – or if others nearby are out.

Agates should be a good possibility: look for gravel beds that have eroded out of sand along beaches.

Then there's the stranger flotsam and jetsam you might encounter, including stuff that's still alive. Skate egg casings are one good possibility (sometimes called Mermaid Purses), and these can have still-growing embryos inside. Smaller living creatures like snails could be around as well, but sometimes even more exciting are their shells.

Here's a guide ot possibilities:

Moon snail - Seaside Aquarium

Moon snail shells are one find. These and other snail shells can be quite intricate and absolutely beautiful. They can get 3 to 4 inches around or more.

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Sometimes, other creatures have moved into these shells so you may wind up encountering a new life form. Hermit crabs make it a habit to take over this kind of real estate.

Mermaid's Purse - Seaside Aquarium

Skulls and skeleton parts from a variety of creatures can be found. Seabird skulls are especially wondrous in shape.

You could find debris fields with bark chips, large tubeworm casings, hermit crabs, algae and kelp. Fossils of all sorts could be found.

There's also whale burps: these are compacted chunks of beach grass that almost look like cubed hay

It's the human-made finds that are sometimes the most striking.

Actual glass floats from Asia tick upwards slightly in frequency during these winter events. These are leftovers of a bygone era, now very rare to find. Until about the '70s and '80s they washed up on Washington's coast and Oregon beaches with regularity. Now, not so much.

Also from Asia that's a bit of a coveted find: large red light bulbs. These usually come from fishing boats out of Korea or Japan and will have that kind of writing on them. They're rather large red bulbs, clearly sturdy and hardy enough to make the trek from eastern shores to the Oregon coast or even Washington coast.

Photo courtesy Lincoln County Sheriffs - found in Waldport . Then there's always the vague chance of encountering a downed Space X rocket. It's happened before

It's like a lot of stuff from out there in the ocean: some of it simply washes up here, no matter where it's originally from. Some objects get sucked into ocean currents after being in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (a massive vortex of human-made debris that is in between Asia and North America), and those currents bring them here. Sometimes, they simply make a meandering trek along the Pacific Ocean's waves and get dropped onto theses shores, coming from the west, south or north.

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